Nearly everything you think you know about mother-infant bonding is untrue … and that’s not an accident.
Where did the pseudoscientific beliefs about bonding come from and why did they appear when they did? It wasn’t because we were experiencing an epidemic of unbonded children. Why have pseudoscientific beliefs been maintained for the past generation? It isn’t because they have led to any improvement in the mental health of children. What’s really going on?
[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Bonding pseudoscience isn’t about what infants need; it is a way of controlling maternal behavior.[/pullquote]
It has been 25 years since Diane Eyer wrote the paper (and then the book) Mother-Infant Bonding: A Science Fiction:
A study of the research on postpartum mother-infant bonding shows that results from poorly constructed research programs were published in major journals and became a part of hospital policy because the bonding concept was politically useful in the struggle between advocates of natural childbirth and managers of the medical model of birth. The concept was also uncritically accepted because it was consistent with a longstanding ideology of motherhood that sees women as the prime architects of their children’s personalities.
Contemporary notions of bonding are less than 50 years old, but they were eagerly adopted by those who saw them as politically useful.
…[B]onding had become extremely popular in the mid 1970s primarily because of its usefulness in the political struggle between the natural childbirth movement and hospital obstetrics. The bonding imperative appeared to give women more control over their birth experience, appeared to be part of a more natural birth, and allowed them to have their infants and family with them in what had previously been a lonely and often demeaning experience.
Bonding pseudoscience serves the same purpose for natural childbirth and breastfeeding advocates as climate pseudoscience serves for big business and evolution pseudoscience serves for religious fundamentalists. It offers an opportunity for believers to force their beliefs on others.
Bonding is still widely believed to be an established rule for governing the mother’s behavior… [T]he concept has continued to flourish (in varying forms) as part of the ideology in which women’s constant proximity to their infants (whether they desire it or not) is seen as a formula for preventing later problems of the child.
The seminal research on bonding was conducted by Klaus and Kennel who analogized women to goats, cows and sheep. Their research methodology was deeply flawed:
… Kennell and Klaus studied the “bonding” of 28 low-income, predominantly black, unmarried primiparae (first-time mothers) of normal birth weight babies…
After one month, the mothers returned to the hospital for interviews and observations. One of the interview questions related to the assessment of their “caretaking” was: “When the baby cries and has been fed, and the diapers are dry, what do you do?” On a scale of 0 to 3, 0 was given for letting the baby cry it out and 3 for picking it up every time. Another interview question was: “Have you been out since the baby was born, and who sat?” A score of 0 was given if the mother had been out, felt good, and did not think about the infant while she was out and a score of 3 was given if she did not leave the baby or if she did go out but thought constantly about the baby. More of the extended-contact mothers reported picking up the baby when it cried and not wanting to leave the baby. The researchers evaluated this finding as evidence of stronger mother-infant bonding in the group that held their babies for 16 extra hours.
There is so much wrong with this study that it’s difficult to know where to begin:
First is the question of the degree to which many of these dependent variables, such as letting the baby “cry it out” or not going out without thinking about the baby, are actually valid measures of caretaking. The woman who can’t leave her baby might be anxious or might not have anyone to leave the baby with. The woman who is able to forget about the baby when she goes out might have a trusted baby- sitter or might be self-assured and highly competent. “Standing near the examining table” during the pediatric exam could be an indication of anxiety or attitudes toward medical authority, or it could result from the different treatment of the experimental group—mothers might be less shy with doctors and nurses who witnessed their holding the babies during the extra contact treatment…
No matter. The concept of bonding was seized upon as a tool in the ongoing effort of natural childbirth advocates to pressure obstetricians.
Lamaze instructors adopted the term, and the reform-minded obstetrician, who became aware of the bonding concept in 1976 with the publication of Klaus and Kennell’s book, claims that he was delighted to have a scientific reason to back up what he already wanted to do.
It is similarly used to this day and has been enthusiastically adopted by lactation professionals for the same reason. No one seems to care that there was no evidence that medicated birth or formula feeding had produced an epidemic of unbonded children; similarly, no one seems to care that increasing rates of unmedicated birth and breastfeeding have failed to improve any mental health parameters of children.
Perhaps even more important is the way that the pseudoscience of bonding confirms misogynistic beliefs about how women ought to behave:
Perhaps the most profound influence of all on the construction and acceptance of bonding was a deeply embedded ideology regarding the proper role of women and the political need to retain at least something of that ideology in the face of the feminist challenges of the 1970s and the continuing migration of women into the labor market…
Bonding pseudoscience isn’t about what infants need; it is a way of controlling maternal behavior.
The belief that infants and children are so profoundly shaped by their own mothers that a few hours of contact with them could inoculate them from harm, even enhance their lives for years to come, would seem to border on magical thinking. Yet the idea was readily embraced as a scientific truth because it fit so perfectly with presuppositions about women and infants that have been socially constructed over the course of a century and a half and were threatening to come undone.
None of that would matter except for the fact that bonding pseudoscience is actively harming women:
Bonding is an impossible standard to adhere to. Locking women into such standards and then blaming them for failing to conform is an emotional drain not only on women, but on the entire family…
[C]onceiving of women as unthinking automatons, the prime architects of their children’s fate, blinds us to the real causes of the problems of children, not to mention women, such as poverty and social isolation.
The bottom line is that most of what passes for conventional wisdom about mother-infant bonding is pseudoscience in the service of misogynistic cultural aims. It doesn’t benefit babies and it harms mothers.
